


The Man who Saw with Blinding Sight went into that Good Night

by scaryscalp



Category: Original Work
Genre: Based on a painting, Horror, Original Fiction, Other, Scary, Short, description of corpses, if i need to tag more let me know, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21515434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scaryscalp/pseuds/scaryscalp
Summary: Based on a painting by Edgar Bundy called "Greatest General of All" from 1911. It may become part of a series I'll be doing where I write a scary story based on various paintings, depending on how much free-time I have, and the reception to this one.Here's a link where you can view the artwork: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/shey4fv8
Kudos: 2





	The Man who Saw with Blinding Sight went into that Good Night

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Greatest General Of All](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/536737) by Edgar Bundy. 



Every bone ached, the howling pain from the spear pulsing and reminding him he was still alive, though not for much longer. The man’s body would reside in that field, perishing far away from home. Where was home? He couldn’t recall anymore. Couldn’t remember if it mattered. Why should it? He was already here in that cursed puddle bleeding out into foreign dust. 

Other men lie around him, steeping in the blight. Just falling, like those little white flowers in the springtime, merely not with a delicate caress, but with an exhausted drop. The morbid assembly had long ago collapsed into death’s cool grasp. Those that had were being pecked at by the crows. They ripped strips of battered meat off dry bones with pitch beaks until there was no good flesh left (all that lingered was for maggots anyhow). He regarded the spirits as they reached their charcoal fingers into the smokey sky and flicker away to the next battle. The scattered clopping of the battalion’s horses was fading out, he knew not whether it was for the spirit rapidly flowing out of him or to the distance widening between them. The soldiers exactly like those crows, taking flight to where the gore will satiate their hunger once more. To drain the shrieking and blood into their bellies, but to always remain vacant.

New hooves joined the cannon bursts and metal clattering, those of someone dark, something ghostly. The shady steps soon moved into his view; deep bay hooves with white on them, as yet the creature stomped on white paint. The moribund man turned his gaze from the fellow dead to the familiar rider. A death’s head, decorated in a fine burgundy cloak, flaming hair hanging down its shoulders. The rider’s empty gaze peered out into unsurprised in humanity’s ruin of one another. The bitter black pits seemed to blaze, still remaining darker than the bleakest night. As he lay there glaring up at them, he felt emptied of even the vaguest hope, only the still of what the rider meant. The flaming skull let his gaze glide out onto the dead, engrossing them in it as he drifted. Smoke seeped even deeper into the sky, shutting off any light that dare struggle to caress the earth. As he made eye-contact with the fading man, he showed all that would have been, yet will never be, and all that ever was. He surrendered his last shuddering breath as the new crows sank down to swallow what he previously was. The Grim nudged his companion onward, to the next playing field of life.


End file.
